Singular Moments
by Victoria2
Summary: Sequel to “Watching”. After taking on duties around the mansion, Logan marks the senior English class’s work, stumbling across a poem by Marie that makes him ask the question, ‘Is she really happy?’


Title: Singular Moments  
  
Author: Victoria (atlantic_iced_tea@hotmail.com)  
  
Rating: PG-13 to be safe  
  
Summary: Sequel to "Watching". After taking on duties around the mansion, Logan marks the senior English class's work, stumbling across a poem by Marie that makes him ask the question, 'Is she really happy?'  
  
Feedback: Is, as always, treasured and will be kept in the good china cabinet to show my guests at dinner parties.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters - Marvel, Fox and a bunch of lawyers do. But I bet they don't have half as much fun with them as I do.  
  
Author's Note: This is the third part in my little series dedicated to the angstful pairing of Logan/Marie. I'm sorry for making them so damned sad all the time, but things get a bit happier in this episode. Just a little.  
  
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For those singular moments The ones that are hollow and empty Where you pull at your skin and sigh Rolling your head and fall And you arch your back till it hurts When you sit and muse Looking for the meaning in you And the afternoon sits still As you lay out flat and cry For a reason you don't know That is the perfect moment Because solace is the only virtue In this imperfect world  
  
Logan sat for a moment after he finished reading, staring at the sheet of paper in front of him. Marie had written that. He knew that because he could see her name there at the top of the page, scribbled in a slanting grey cursive.  
  
He still didn't know how he had ended up there, marking the senior English class's writing. Somehow Chuck had cornered him into it. Logan thought it was a stupid idea. What did he know about English? Nothing.  
  
He had been cursing his way through poems about daffodils and clouds and all the other hallmark images, when Marie's name on the marking sheet had caught his attention. He had rifled through the stack in front of him until he found her work, and slowly he had started to read it.  
  
It was short, he liked that. It belonged to Marie, and he liked that even more. But it seemed so. sad. As if she was crying out for something.  
  
If he were a scholar he'd understand it better, he thought. Know what it meant, realise the metaphor or whatever it was. But he was just Logan, the wild man trapped in the captivity of a school for 'Gifted Children'.  
  
For a few months after he had got back, Logan had rattled around the mansion, aimlessly terrorising staff and students alike with his snarls and glares. It got so bad that Charles had to ask him to 'consider others'. Logan had told him that he had never been one for considering others, and he didn't know how to start now.  
  
That stupid remark had ignited something deep within Scott Summers, still seething over Logan's flirtation with Jean almost three years ago. And so Cyclops had drawn up a 'rehabilitation' plan, designed ostensibly to teach Logan how to integrate himself in 'civilised' society. Secretly though, it was punishment for the man who had dared try to steal 'his girl', and a reminder of the power that Scott wielded around that place.  
  
The first time he'd seen the programme he'd almost choked on the beer he was downing. Scott had sidled up to him one night, a sheet of crisp white paper in his hand.  
  
"Here you are, big man."  
  
That's what he had said. Big man. Logan had felt the tips of his metal claws knaw at the inside of the skin, waiting to burst through and maul the self-satisfied figure in front of him. Then as quickly as he had appeared, Scott melted into the background with Jean. Logan had felt Scott watching him as he unfolded the paper, observing his horror as he read the neatly typed words.  
  
Teaching. That was what Scott had decided would benefit Logan. He had almost roared in anger. Instead he moved across the room away from Cyclops without a word, his shoulders hunched, fury emanating from him like a beast in heat. When he finally reached the door he turned around and delivered a steely glare to the man fool enough to try to torment the Wolverine. Scott's face paled.  
  
From then on, the fearless leader did actually look as if he did fear something. That something was Logan. Scott realised that he'd pushed him to far this time, that this was a far weightier thing than he had at first envisaged.  
  
Logan liked to taunt Scott with wide smiles now, and enjoyed the way he could see the hair on Cyclops's neck stand on end. The boy really thought that Logan might hurt him - the fool. Logan was too grateful to Xavier for his help and kindness to ever hurt his precious protégé. But not too grateful to stop terrifying him.  
  
It was a welcome distraction for Logan, this teasing of Scott. It helped take his mind off more. painful matters. Not that thinking about Marie was painful on it's own, but coupled with a burning love that could never be consummated, it was unbearable.  
  
That was the real reason that he had reluctantly gone along with this rehabilitation idea - to get Marie out of his head. The other staff had quickly agreed that actual teaching was probably not a good idea. 'Absolutely not' and 'out of the question!' were but two of the more polite phrases he had heard being thrown about by his colleagues.  
  
Instead, he was resigned to the position of local dogsbody. Setting up the gym, fetching books from the library, and, of course, grading papers. It was humiliating, he knew. And under any other circumstance he would never have agreed to it. But his heart ached and he felt hollow, and he hoped that these stupid tasks given to him might just help fill up the big Marie shaped whole inside him.  
  
So that's how he had come to be marking the senior English classes papers. Logan had argued with Jean that he had no idea how to tell an 'A' paper from an 'F', but she had simply dropped a marking guide on the desk in front of him, given him a sweet little smile and disappeared into the black corridor.  
  
The task had been to write a poem about happiness. Logan was still unsure as to why daffodils and clouds made the other kids happy, and had barely managed to resist scrawling some rather obscene comments onto most of them. There had of course been some good poems, even in his opinion. Some of them had really gotten into it, and their enthusiasm had been infective. He had given those one's B's, not doubting that the whole lot of them would appeal to Storm that his marking system was 'wack' or something like that. Truth was, he didn't have a marking system. The poems he liked, could connect with, got good grades. The piles of junk he could barely sit through didn't.  
  
He was supposed to record the grades on a sheet with all the pupils names on them. That's when he had seen her. Marie. Logan had flicked through the papers until he found it. "Singular Moment's". That was what she had called it.  
  
Logan wondered what made Marie happy. He had a feeling she wouldn't stick to the universal standard of raindrops on roses. No, she was smart. Real smart. Much more so than him. That feeling was reinforced as he read through her poem. It was just another of the inequalities that existed to serve as obstacles in their relationship.  
  
The task had been to write about happiness, but as he read the feeling of melancholy the poem evoked in him overwhelmed Logan. Maybe if it had been written by anyone else he wouldn't have given it a second thought, quickly marking it a 'C', too busy thinking about his cigar craving to rally care. But it was Marie, and he thought that if he could understand the poem, he might be able to understand her.  
  
He hurriedly copied the poem down, scribbling the words onto a sheet of loose paper and stuffing it guiltily in his pocket before anyone could walk in and catch him. In his red pen he scrawled a large 'A' in the top right hand corner and dutifully copied the grade down into his ledger sheet.  
  
He had known that the moment he went up to his room and closed the dark oak door behind him, he'd pull out the crumpled piece of paper and reread it until he fell asleep still in his clothes, too engrossed in the writings of Marie's mind to even change for bed. And he did.  
  
When he woke the next morning, he still didn't understand what it was that made Marie happy. She spoke of pulling at her skin. Was that a reference to never being able to touch anyone, or was it simply that she ached to break free of something?  
  
Logan realised that the only way he would ever know was to ask her, and that thought scared him. Five months had passed now since he returned from Canada, and throughout all that time, he had never really spoken to Marie. He hadn't ignored her exactly, but it was if neither of them were rushing to talk to each other. Instead they skirted around the sidelines of conversation, never really saying anything.  
  
That had suited him. He was afraid to speak to her, scared in case somehow he revealed his true feelings to her. But now he couldn't avoid it. He needed to know the answer to his question  
  
"Are you happy?"  
  
Marie jumped at the sudden voice behind her. She had been lounging on one of the sofas in the game room, watching substandard television with Kitty and Jubilee, and laughing at the boys outside playing soccer. She was smiling broadly as Bobby iced the ball by accident for the fifth time when a strong male voice breathed into her ear without warning.  
  
She turned to find Logan staring intently at her over the back of the sofa. He had leaned his whole body over so that he could ask her the question, and the nearness of him made her senses tingle.  
  
"What?" she asked, her slow southern drawl tinged with confusion. After five months of nothing substantial, nothing real, Logan had finally decided to speak to her, and the first thing he asked was if she was happy?  
  
Logan looked embarrassed at the attention he was attracting from the other girls gathered around the TV. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jubilee nudging Kitty, giggling at his strange behaviour.  
  
"Are you happy?" he repeated earnestly. Marie became aware that, not for the first time in the two and a half years she had spent as a student at Xavier's, she was the centre of attention. She really didn't like it.  
  
"Um, maybe we should speak outside." Her voice was hesitant, scared that her reluctance to speak might be misconstrued and Logan would leave. But she could tell by the relief she saw wash over him that he understood.  
  
Quickly she picked herself up out of the seat and without a word they walked out the door, through the halls and found themselves in the leafy grounds of the school.  
  
Marie wished she could tell her heart to slow down it was beating so fast around her ears. All this time she had managed to hide the feelings she had for Logan by staying away from him, but now he was so near, she struggled to conceal them.  
  
"Are you okay, Logan?" Marie's sweet accent floored him, his senses overtaken by the southern drawl and wide eyes. For a moment he was unable to respond. Marie looked at him, concern all over her face. He was red faced, struggling to breathe - something was very wrong.  
  
"Do you want me to get Dr Grey or someone.?" she trailed off uncertainly. Marie could feel her heart beating fast beneath the soft wool of her sweater. Her words seemed to hang in the air, as if everything was frozen, and that moment would last forever. In Logan's eyes burned a hunger she had never seen before, and it worried her. Something must be wrong for the normally monosyllabic man before her to suddenly question her happiness. She tried again.  
  
"Logan?" she asked, reaching out a gloved hand to touch his bare arm. As she touched him she held her breath. She could feel heat radiating from him, even through the thin leather. She longed to press her skin against his, to push her small fingers into his palm and feel the blood pump through his veins.  
  
Logan was staring intently at her hand on his bicep, focussing hard on the pale brown glove that rested so peacefully on him.  
  
"Logan?" she repeated the worry in her voice jerking his awake from the dreamlike trance. He stared into her eyes.  
  
"You asked me if I was happy?"  
  
"I did."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I wanted to know. Are you? Happy, I mean?"  
  
"I don't know. What kind of a question is that?"  
  
"I read your poem."  
  
"For English class?"  
  
"Yeah. I liked it."  
  
".Thanks."  
  
It's just. I read it, and you were supposed to write about happiness, right? Well, I didn't know if you were happy. You seemed sad."  
  
"Sure I'm happy."  
  
"You're lying."  
  
"What? No I'm not."  
  
"I might not be smart Marie, but I'm not stupid. I might not be the kind of man who reads stuff like that all the time and knows what it means, but I know you. And I sure as hell know that that piece of work you handed in was not written by someone who's carefree."  
  
It was the most he had said to her since before he left for Canada. How could she tell him why she was unhappy, the reason she felt like her insides were pulling her apart, that the cause of her despair, was him. And her love for him. His eyes, his body, his breath. That his very presence beside her now made her heart swell so hard she thought it might break. That without him she was nothing. She couldn't. Not now and not ever. It was a hopeless hope; it was the only one she had.  
  
"It's just a poem, Logan." Saying his name was intoxicating. She wanted to speak it aloud, over and over, until there wasn't a breath left in her body. "It doesn't mean anything."  
  
He looked unconvinced. Marie tried to reassure him. Because if he ever discovered the truth. he might just pack up on that motorcycle and disappear into the wilderness again, never to return.  
  
"Honestly, it was just a poem. I did it the morning it was handed in. you don't need to worry about me." She gave him a small smile, concealing the pain inside.  
  
"Well." Now that the first rush of adrenaline had subsided, Logan felt a bit lost. He also felt stupid. Of course the poem didn't mean anything. It was just a stupid bit of nothing for English class. He knew that the real reason he had reacted so strongly was the flicker of recognition he had seen in Marie's work. He felt like she was describing him, the untamed man inside the confines of civilisation, through her writing. And maybe, just maybe, she felt a smattering of what he felt for her. The need and want and passion that had to be reigned in whenever she was near. Her scent, her hair, her smile.  
  
But that was just a dream he dreamed. Those were his singular moments. 


End file.
